Why Wellness in Schools isn’t Working Part I

Stress is a growing disincentive for current and prospective educators, making wellness a concerning paradox. While consensus is high for supporting our most precious human resource, the return on investment is unknown. Only 7.3% of educators surveyed ‘strongly believed’ that stress reduction as a PD topic would decrease their chances of burnout with 97% of that same sample believing burnout is a real risk (TC Survey, 2018).

Without hope for meaningful results and inconsistent utilization of services, we need to better understand this issue. Why aren’t educators taking more advantage of wellness offerings and where should districts allocate their limited resources? For those who do avail themselves of wellness initiatives, are the results leading to long term health improvement? Why are educators lacking confidence in stress inoculation? We need to understand the limiting factors putting our schools at risk.

The University of British Columbia yielded the first scientific association between teacher burnout and student stress, a growing concern for mental health, suicide, addictions and more. But even if the neuro-chemical link between teachers and students wasn’t clinically significant, those in the classroom know that the growing perception of student apathy, poor initiative, and declining maturity requires educators to overcome a significant amount of distress, which goes well beyond students.  

With perceived student changes registering as less than a quarter of total stress, what about the influence of work/life balance challenges (37.7%), difficulty with administration (15.7%) or policy (14.66%) plus the aforementioned lack of confidence in school support? To reduce educator stress and its many reverberations, we need to consider the source, the action and a less commonly studied element of perception.

The paradoxical theory of change means that we need to fully understand a problem, before trying to find solutions, otherwise we may create more problems. Five factors that serve to limit the effectiveness of wellness, will be examined, building a framework for the ideas outlined in Part II.

Factor #1: Understanding Resistance

Most districts lack of a unified paradigm defining wellness and the association with overall health, because they like most social service agencies, fail to appreciate how people get unhealthy to begin with. While wellness includes activities to improve health, resistance in actualizing a wellness lifestyle is critically important to encouraging sustainability or ownership, as is the organizations complicity in subverting this process.

We may for instance recognize that looking at our phone right before going to bed or the first thing we do upon waking needs changing, but are we aware of our growing reliance, dependence and addition on technology as a whole? And for the schools in a race to continuously improve access to technology, without realizing how this shift is inherently compromises our brain/body balance, will a workshop in mindfulness really make a difference?

When educators attribute a significant portion of their stress to work, we may question whether faculty will be receptive to support. Organization derived resistance is the push back leading educators to be weary of such help, with some already investing less of themselves in their work, sometimes out of spite but most often self-preservation.

Sometimes resistance is not born out of mistrust, but a more personal struggle to get unstuck. When our needs aren’t being met, we experience emotional pain that varies according to our history. For some this may be feeling unworthy while others may fend off despair. To guard against these unpleasant experiences, we without thought, activate our defenses.

Humor, denial, avoidance and the dozen plus protective mechanisms interfere with our ability to get needs met, bracing for pain of some kind (rejection, disappointment, humiliation). When our energy shifts to self-protection, we may feel more immediately safe (emotionally) or secure (physically), but it also means a decline in energy toward understanding the source of our distress and healing efforts. 

If we employ our protective mechanisms over a long period of time, we risk a more dangerous shift into survival mode. On the continuum between thriving and surviving, human beings who get stuck in the space of existing will find their wellness deteriorate over time.

With real or perceived threats and our instinct to self-protect, chronic stress grows. Stress is the unseen burden on our system, depleting vital resources and increasing inflammation, a primary contributor to most physical and psychological illness. When activating protective mechanisms or in full- fledged survival mode, stress is generated as a result of insulating from further harm.

Thus, a wellness or stress reduction offering may be less appealing then the immediacy of consuming unhealthy food as a temporary mood elevator. Now our protective mechanism, that instead of nourishing our bodies triggers a secondary problem. Nutrient depleted food will hinder our ability to cope with daily life, decrease our energy level, make decision making difficult and ultimately amplify our vulnerability to illness.

Factor 2: Paradigm  

If a person is overweight, there are physical and psychological barriers interfering with their ability to take off and keep off the weight, such as a fear of being seen. A woman who was abused early in her life may circumvent male attention by insulating herself with layers of protection. Simply offering a weight loss program may not be sufficient to penetrate the deep complexity such as purpose the weight serves.

Misunderstanding about healthy food, appreciation of the link between neurotransmitters and diet, and the underlying psychological reasons for insulating ourselves in fat, are just a few of the barriers why people don’t attempt or sustain a wellness plan. Wellness services are typically embedded in an appreciation for the forces for sameness or change acting on people all the time, creating resistance to sustainable change.     

Wellness is to physical health as psychosocial emotional learning (PSEL) is to mental health, both working together to form an integrated approach to well-being. One without the other is less effective, because as we know, there is crossover between physical and mental health. When our immune system isn’t working well, inviting frequent illness, our mood may decline. When we are experiencing chronic anxiety, our body gets worn down inviting illness.

When somebody gets a massage, a popular wellness activity, they may feel better for hours or longer. However, if the source of distress causing their initial tension is not addressed, their muscles will soon return to a state of high tension. This doesn’t mean the massage wasn’t helpful as it can help improve circulation and even increase our attention to where the body holds energy. It does mean that without education about the mind body connection, it’s more apt to resemble symptom relief.

Districts need to educate their faculty about the integrated nature of health including the roles and responsibilities of the individual and the organization. When new emotional or physical supports are introduced, they need to be born out of a philosophy of dis-ease and restoration that people can understand, otherwise we are applying topical solutions for systemic etiology. Just like a therapist treating trauma, the orientation of that practitioner needs to be appreciated so the client can find greater volition of recovery. Therapy and treatment are vastly different.

Please email Dr. Scherz for Part II at [email protected]